(Phaysis)

So the apartment management saw fit to install a new central heater unit. After a week of having to use space heaters to keep the place thawed, the service techs came around Friday morning to cut down the old unit (vintage 1978) and replace the whole thing with a new one. They were even nice enough to leave the task of cleanup to me (how sweet).

But the upshot is that I now have central heat, which is all-too-important this week, what with the latest arctic blast sitting on top of us. We even got some sleet today. Zero accumulations, but sleet nonetheless.

The apartment management declined my written request for a discount on rent for the inconvenience and expense of running the space heaters. Said it was “uncustomary”, and that I only had to deal with it for a week, and that a space heater was provided by management, and yadda-yadda. Notch it up to another thing I dislike about this apartment.

“But Shawn, why don’t you just move when your lease expires at the end of next month, since you hate it so much? Aren’t we all just a little tired of your bitching?”

That’s a (pair of) complex question(s) in search of a simple answer. There is no simple answer. This is my space. I’ve been here two years; it is cavernous, clean, relatively quiet. Sure, there’re shitty things about this apartment complex, but the same is said about everywhere else. I just cannot justify the mental and financial expense of looking for another place and moving. If the lease renewal contract I get next month presents itself with a stupendous rise in rate, then yes, I’ll have no choice, obviously. But if it’s all the same, then I’d prefer to stay.

This is my god-damn neighborhood and has been for the past nine years, thank you.

So, something occurred to me. I am not a man, and I have proof.

1. I don’t own a house, nor do I pay on a mortgage.
2. I am not married, nor have I ever had a fiancé.
3. My last girlfriend was over a decade ago.
4. I do not have children (sired, hired, or otherwise).
5. I hate football. American football.
6. I dislike sports, board games, video games, card games.
7. I am the most uncompetitive person you know.

So there it is. There can be no other explanation for my complete lack of manly testosterone-drenched wall-punching ground-standing power and respect. It’s so obvious, it’d take a hermaphroditic transgendered eunuch on hormone replacement therapy to not see it.

Me: sitting at Epoch trying to enjoy my cup of light roast.

You: rambling on about your stupid E-cigarettes to anybody and everybody you can. The way you rave about them leads me to believe one of two scenarios: 1) you are so hungry for someone to validate your lifestyle, or 2) you are on the e-cigarette vendor’s payroll. Sure, you’re not burning anything and stinking up the airspace, but it’s still an addiction.

A character flaw has recently come to my attention. Apparently, I have a tendency to tell stories from my life as an automatic response to memories triggered by the current conversation. You talk about being an english major, and I wax on about the three times I took the same literature class. You bring up multisided dice and I’ll unravel an other-people-story about my old gamer friends carrying suede drawstring baggies everywhere they went. If you say “hey, what’s up?”, I’ll rant about how my job stresses me out because I’m doing this hot project and my manager needs the numbers like yesterday and I really really need some coffee would you please serve me a small light roast I mean dark roast to go wait for here.

What alerted me to this was a conversation with an old friend who was chatting with me about a thing she did and how tough it was. She was venting about the circumstance and seeking some consolation. What resulted was me blabbing about a similar story from my adolescence. I fell into the pattern of the coffeeshop conversation, where you can sit and chat for hours and nothing is really said; it’s more like synchronized monologues. But other people know better than that. She called me out. Said I should write down my stories somewhere. Sell them, make money. Our conversation ended shortly thereafter once I realized I’d insensitively hit her tilt switch, and we haven’t talked much since.

If you notice me doing this kind of thing, call me out on it. Let me know in no uncertain terms that my behavior is annoying. Sure, it’ll hurt like hell emotionally to learn this lesson at such a late stage in my life, but I’ll learn. Eventually, I’ll stop talking and return to being the sounding board everybody wants in their life.